Skip to content

2018 House · CA-49

The New York Times/Siena College · fieldwork ended 2018-10-21 (16 days before the election) · 500 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 53.37% · Republican 38.65%

D+14.7

The certified result

Democrat 56.42% · Republican 43.58%

D+12.8

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 53.37 − 38.65 = 14.72
  2. Actual margin = 56.419 − 43.581 = 12.838
  3. Signed miss = 14.72 − (12.838) = 1.882
  4. Absolute miss = |1.882| = 1.882

The poll overstated the Democrat by 1.9 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 56370, race ID 236 (538 database).